题目：When Rumors Meet Reality: The Impact of “Dust Floor” Myths and Pollution Events on Housing Prices

主讲人：王潇，湖南大学

时间：2025年5月8日（星期四）下午13:30-15:00

地点：暨南大学（石牌校区）中惠楼106会议室

主讲人简介:

Xiao Wang is an assistant professor of economics at the School of Economics and Trade at Hunan University. She received her Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019 and has worked in Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University as a postdoctoral researcher from 2019 to 2021. 

Xiao Wang’s research focuses on environmental economics and health economics. She studies questions related to environmental regulations, firm behavior, and health impact of pollution. Her current projects analyze pollution exposure inequity, location choice of firms in response to environmental regulations and public pressure, and effects of pollution on mortality and other health related outcomes. 

Abstract:

Housing prices respond to environmental risks in local neighborhoods when information about the risks is well disclosed to the market. Most often, the information disclosure is through official channels such as government regulatory announcements and pollution monitoring data. However, when official information is delayed or incomplete, informal signals such as rumors can play a substantial role in shaping public perceptions of environmental risks. This paper studies the response of housing prices to a “dust floor” rumor, concerning housing units located on the 9th to 11th floors of a building to experience higher exposure to air pollution. We employ a triple-difference strategy to analyze how interactions between the rumor and visible environmental events - sandstorms - affect the prices of condo units on floors 9 to 11, relative to those on adjacent floors. The analysis draws upon micro-level housing transaction data of newly-built and resale condominums in Beijing, China from 2015 to 2023. Our results reveal that the rumor on environmental risks alone does not significantly distort housing prices, but when coupled with sandstorm events, it leads to a 3.5% price reductions for the rumor-affected housing units. We also observe a stronger price effect of the rumor on lower-priced houses. Preliminary analysis on the rental housing market shows no effect on rental price.